


There's Something Lonesome About You

by geckoholic



Series: author's favorites [11]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Casual Sex, F/M, Naked Male Clothed Female, Oral Sex, Table Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6696025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Midnight, her mother used to say, is when the crazies turn up. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's Something Lonesome About You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ardentaislinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentaislinn/gifts).



> Filling your request for a Bartender AU with Furiosa as the bartender. I hope the ending is happy and/or hopeful enough for your taste. :)
> 
> Beta-read by alphaflyer. Thank you!! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "From Eden" by Hozier.

Midnight, her mother used to say, is when the crazies turn up. She doesn't consider that to be true anymore – the real head cases roll around way earlier, or way later – but she still thinks about that every time an unfamiliar face strolls through the door of the bar during witching hour. Her mother was superstitious and loved her country lore, but she was also smart and perceptive. Just because a rule doesn't always hold true doesn't mean it's always wrong, either. 

And so, when the door opens at five past midnight on a Tuesday night during the height of summer, Furiosa's head whips around from the regular patron she is chatting with . The old guy'd been telling her about the right time to plant oilseed, being real passionate about the whole thing. Furiosa has never planted anything in her life, and doesn't plan on it, but she appreciates passion and it’s better than an angry rant about politics from someone who shouldn't ever be allowed near a ballot box in the first place, so she’d played along. 

She's not the only one appraising the new arrival; the whole bar clique moves as one, five weary old drunks and her, all staring towards the doorway. And he looks harmless enough: short hair, blue eyes that look kind but a little haunted, ratty leather jacket. Had he stumbled into the fancy college bar a few blocks away, people would step out of his way due to his sheer physical presence. Around here, he doesn't ping any radars. 

The bar clique returns their attention to the varieties of booze currently in front of them, and the newcomer tips his head and sits down on a lone free stool on the other end of the bar. He doesn't flag her, and so Furiosa waits until he sat down and settled in, head turned to the muted television in the corner, and then picks her conversation with the old farmer back up. She knows his story. She knows the story of everyone who turns up here daily, weekdays as well as weekends, spending their food budget on beer. He'd been a farmer for thirty years, then his wife got sick. Now he's a widower with no land and more debt than he could ever pay off in the time he's got left. This bar is the only reason he bothers to get up and get dressed every day, and Furiosa doesn't judge him for that choice. 

Polishing glasses as she listens to a lecture about the soil quality in this area and how to avoid over-acidification, Furiosa glances over to the newcomer every once in a while. Another thing her mother taught her was that she shouldn't let anyone stay without buying – if they want free shelter from the rain they can find themselves a bus stop, she used to say. She said that the whole year, whether it was snowing. blisteringly hot or indeed raining. Her mother was a smart woman, but simple, not one to make things more complicated than necessary. Either way; this is a business, and it has rules. Buy or leave. 

She puts the towel away and walks over to him, hip leaning against the counter, arms braced on her hips. “What'll it be?” 

“Huh?” he says, tearing his eyes away from game flickering across the tiny screen – a tube, because Furiosa doesn't believe in replacing things before they break, and this little box has a few more years in it yet. His gaze is unfocused, directed slightly to her left rather than at her face. His eyes are red-rimmed, and she tries not to wonder whether that's from the wind and the heat and the dry sand that's in every crevice of this place during summer, or something else entirely. Then he glances across the bar, to the glasses and bottles the others are nursing, and clears his throat. “Whiskey. Don't care if it's good, but do make sure it burns.” 

That's a wish easily fulfilled; cheap booze that tastes like cow piss but could strip the paint of the walls is what makes up half her stash. She pours him a fifth and shoves it over the counter; he raises the glass at her, the ghost of a polite smile playing at his lips in thanks. Furiosa decides she likes him. 

Her old farmer has found a new ear for the knowledge that's all he got left from a business he'd probably inherited from his father. Before him, it would have belonged to his grandfather, and so on and so forth. Much like her and the bar; Furiosa had played in the staff room when it still belonged to her grandmother. The only difference between them is that luck had stuck by her side while it had strayed from his. 

Having momentarily lost her source of entertainment, Furiosa surveys the booths across the room. In the far corner, there's a couple gazing deeply into each other's eyes and blind to the rest of the world; a few guys in cheap suits who’d ordered a bottle of Vodka when they’d come in that’s still half full, and a group of students she'd carded upon arrival One of them marches up to the bar every fifteen minutes to get them a new round of shots. She's giving them another hour, at most, before they'll be crawling home with green faces and their stomachs in an uproar. 

“Quiet night?” the newcomer asks, sounding not quite there, interested but not invested. 

Furiosa turns to him and shrugs. “It's a Tuesday.” 

That's neither confirmation nor negation, and he seems to recognize that, grinning at her. It's a little lopsided, only one side of his mouth curling up while the other stays in place, and Furiosa finds that charming in spite of herself. 

“So business as usual, then?” He quietly shoves his glass at her for a refill. 

She bends to get the bottle and pours him another fifth, makes it a double when he waves his hand as she's about to pull away. “Enough to keep the lights on.” 

Just when he opens his mouth to reply to that, one of the students shows up to order another round. By the time she's sent him away with a full try of shots, the guy's back to watching the game on TV. She sets about wiping down the counter, using that as an excuse to look him over out of the corner of her eye. The leather jacket is old and worn, cracks around the arms and shoulders from heavy use. He's got an almost fully faded bruise low on his jaw, and the bags under his eyes look like they're almost permanent. There's a story to him, she can sense that, but she isn't going to ask. Maybe the bartender spell will work in her favor and he'll tell her his troubles all on his own. Maybe it won't. Her eyes wander a little lower, to his threadbare Henley, all buttons open, and the glimpse it offers. 

As if he feels her gaze, he turns to meet her eyes, quirks an eyebrow and gives her another crooked grin. Furiosa holds his eyes with a straight face. He cocks his head. She braces her hands on her hips. 

“Weekday,” she says, casually, for him to interpret as he chooses. “So I'll close up around two.” 

He averts his eyes to inspect the last of his drink, swirl it around in the glass, then down it in one go. Furiosa is suddenly rather sure that's the end of this, he's going to pay and leave, she misinterpreted things. A pang of regret emerges at that; she wouldn't have minded if he'd stayed, wouldn’t mind if he came around again. But there's better things to worry about than being turned down by a taciturn stranger. 

After a moment, though, he looks back up, searching for her gaze, and nods slowly. “Got nowhere else to be. Might as well stay.” 

She nods back. The lovebirds from the corner booth call to her for the check, and she walks over to settle up. Her bar clique finds itself in need of refills, and she takes care of that. The game on the TV fades into an old nighttime movie. The vodka-drinking suits leave next. Another few rounds of shots, and the students bow out as well. She has to usher out the old patrons when the time comes, but that's their standard; if they had any reason to go home, they wouldn't spend all their nights in this joint. 

While everyone else trickles out, he stays sat on his stool. Keeps watching TV, hardly throwing her a glance, right until she plants herself in front of him, one arm outstretched for him to take. 

“We're alone,” she says. He looks around, expression calm and unassuming, and if she'd had any doubts about doing this, they'd have evaporated right then and there. 

“Looks like we are,” he says, and he's grinning again, just slightly, a barely-there curve to his lips. He bends over the counter to helpfully put his glass on the sink and then stands and takes her hand, threading their fingers together. 

The private-kitchen-slash-break-room barely deserves either name. Save for a coffee machine and a water kettle, no cooking appliances can be found in here. This is her bar; if she wants to make herself something to eat, she'll do so in the actual kitchen. But a break room is regulation and so she has one, small and sparse as it is. There's a small wooden table and two metal chairs with screechingly green seats that have been around since she was little. She hops on it, legs wide, and drags him closer so he's standing between them. She pushes the leather jacket off his shoulders so it slides down to the floor, an endeavor in which he assists by stretching out his arms behind himself. Then she loops her arms around the small of his back, pulls his t-shirt from his jeans and rests her hands there, waiting. 

“You, uh.” He scratches at his forehead. “I should maybe tell you that I'm not looking... I'm not looking for anything permanent.” 

Furiosa smiles at him. “Oh honey, if I wanted something permanent I'd have at least asked for your name at this point.” 

He nods, shoots a quick smile back. “Okay. Yeah, okay. Good.” 

The music from the radio in the bar is wafting over, albeit quieter than before; an upbeat folk song's on right now. The smell carries too, booze and cigarette smoke; to her, all of that equals home. She doesn't often do hookups in here; for some reason, it's more private, more intimate, than her own bed. Her apartment she'd had for three years now, but this place, the bar, that's her life, her family heirloom, her history. He might never know much it means, that she's led them here. 

Apparently satisfied that nobody's expecting more than can be given, he retrieves a condom wrapper from the wallet in his back pocket and places it on the table next to her hips. He pulls his t-shirt over his head and throws it on one of the chairs. Furiosa takes advantage of wealth of smooth skin revealed for her to touch, to run her hands up his spine, fanning out on the muscles in his upper back, then sliding them back down. She makes her way to the front of his jeans and sets upon unbuckling his belt and undoing the buttons. She hooks her fingers in his belt loops and yanks the jeans down together with his boxers – patience may be a virtue, but it has never been one of hers. 

He's grinning again, the crook to it more pronounced now that it's wider, toes off his boots, bends to get rid of his socks too and steps out of the leg wear as it hits the ground. When he's meeting her eyes again, his look is expectant, amused, a little challenging. She runs her hands over his bare hips and glances down to his crotch. 

“Someone's taking an interest,” she says, one of these terrible lines you say during sex and regret once they're out, but he rewards it with a low chuckle and a hand on himself, and she won't complain about getting to watch him pump himself with slow, almost lazy movements. 

“Easily excitable,” he shoots back, and she rolls her eyes. She's not the kind of woman who'd take that as a slight; the fact that he's been hard from a few light innocent touches and being exposed to her gaze is compliment enough in her book. 

Done showing off, he abandons tugging at his erection in favor of running a hand up her still jeans-clad thigh, and she finds she's impatient enough to unbutton her own fly, and lift her hips, making it easy for him to pull down her leg- and underwear too. Once he's discarded them, he kneels down, pushing at her until she scoots closer to the edge of the table and braces herself with both hands. He hooks her legs around his neck and gets to work with long slow swipes of his tongue. It might say something about how long it's been since she's done this, how starved for it she was, that she feels a quick, quiet orgasm roll through her after mere minutes – or maybe he's that good. She doesn't dwell on that, stills him with a hand wrapped around his neck, light but decisive pressure. 

He looks up with a smirk, licking her moisture off his lips, and _oh god_ but that's downright obscene. She's quick to pull him to his feet, running her hands down his ass and aligning herself just right. He doesn't hesitate. He gets the condom in place and his hands under her ass in turn, and hoists her up the rest of the way so he can press into her, slow at first, but with deep, vicious thrusts once he's fully inside. That doesn't last long either – they quickly find a rhythm that works for both of them and she's still sensitive enough from coming the first time that her second climax hits within minutes. He needs a little longer, getting selfish once he's noticed that she's had hers, movements sharp and shallow, but then he's swaying forward, eyes screwed shut, and follows. 

He sniffs and pinches his nose, steps back to remove the condom and tie it off, before throwing it into a trash can under the table. They get dressed in silence, and are almost out of the kitchen when he stops to stare at her, his expression unsure, before leaning in and kissing her. There's no new heat in it; he's not angling for a second round, he's just giving in to an impulse, and draws back after a moment with a gentle smile. 

“Thank you,” he says, and for a second she's overwhelmed by fondness for this stranger, this man who strolled into her bar at random and might stroll out of it in a few minutes, never to be seen again. He's not hers to have, not really, she's gathered that much. 

She nods at him and smiles back. “Thank _you_.” 

They cross the bar and she unlocks the door, moves back so he can step out, but he turns with a hand on the door handle and cocks his head. “Name's Max, by the way.”

“For next time?” Furiosa asks, voice even so as not to betray her surprise or her interest; making it an offer he may take or leave – just like earlier, when she invited him to stay. 

Max nods. “For next time.”


End file.
